The power consumed by an electronic circuit (e.g., an integrated circuit) can be categorized into two main components—dynamic power and leakage power. Dynamic power consumption occurs due to transistor switching activity. Each time a logic gate in the electronic circuit changes state (i.e., from a one to a zero or vice-versa), it charges or discharges the associated parasitic load capacitances. Leakage power consumption is due to leakage currents drawn continuously from the power supply of the electronic circuit. There are various modes that contribute to leakage current, such as subthreshold leakage, reverse-biased PN junctions, drain-induced barrier lowering (DIBL), gate-induced drain leakage, punchthrough currents, gate oxide tunneling, and hot carrier effects.
The total power consumption of an electronic circuit is a sum of the dynamic power and leakage power of each cell of the circuit. Existing simulation tools for estimating total power consumption in electronic circuits commonly estimate the dynamic power and the leakage power independent of each other.
During circuit simulation, circuit designers determine leakage power at different temperatures (e.g., −40° C., 25° C., and 125° C.) and for different process corners (e.g., fast-fast, slow-slow, fast-slow, slow-fast). Although leakage power varies exponentially with temperature, circuit designers choose either a best case scenario (e.g., slow-slow at −40° C.) or a worst case scenario (fast-fast at 125° C.) during simulation. This is because it is difficult to estimate the temperature variations “on-the-fly” during circuit simulation.
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